AUSTIN: Now comes the eighth legislative day, the penultimate day of the 79th General Convention. Resolutions are moving fast and furious between the two houses. Some make it through relatively unscathed. That was the case yesterday when the House of Deputies unanimously concurred with the decision by the House of Bishops to readmit Cuba into the Episcopal Church.

“Right now, I know that the Holy Spirit is moving through all of us,” the Rt. Rev. Griselda Delgado del Carpio, bishop of Cuba, told the deputies. “I want to thank the Lord and the Trinity for this prophetic moment that we are experiencing.”

There were cheers and applause. “Welcome home,” said the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies.

Plans to revise the Book of Common Prayer have traveled a much tougher legislative road. The resolution passed last week by the House of Deputies had a $2 million price tag and projections for a years-long process. It arrived yesterday from the House of Bishops as a proposal to create a Task Force on Liturgical and Prayer Book Revision comprising 10 lay people, 10 priests or deacons, and 10 bishops.

The multi-million-dollar budget was now $201,000 for the translation of liturgical materials with hopes that the Executive Council would find another $200,000 to begin the liturgical revision process. Such is politics. At this late date, with time winding down, the deputies passed the resolution without amendment.

Plenty of work remains. Today’s first order of business is the proposed $134 million budget for 2019-2021.

That’s all for now.

God’s peace,

Dion+

David Mallery and Alma Bell are our senior deputies. This is their sixth General Convention as lay deputies for the Diocese of Maryland.